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Delaware County to raze Civil War-era house

View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoCourtney Hergesheimer | DISPATCHShady Lane Manor in Delaware, now overgrown and in disrepair, has become a haven for squatters and drug users, officials said. Leftover grant money from another project will pay for part of asbestos removal and demolition of this house.

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DELAWARE, Ohio — The old house, built before the Civil War, looks as if it might be haunted:
Vines grow over cinder-block walls; jagged glass lines window frames.

From the 1800s to the mid-1990s, the building was the Delaware County Home, also known as Shady
Lane Manor, a home for the poor, the mentally ill and the elderly. In 1991, according to a survey
prepared as part of the county’s plan to demolish the building, 30 people lived in the home on
County Home Road, a few miles northeast of Delaware.

“It was one of the precursors to nursing homes,” said Gus Comstock, the county’s economic
development director.

The main house was built in 1854; the county added an asylum in 1856.

The property also includes about 300 acres, a barn, a gazebo and the county animal shelter, in
an outbuilding about 100 yards from the house.

By 1996, political support for keeping the home open had waned. The building needed about $1.5
million in renovations, including asbestos removal, if it was to stay open. The county closed the
home that year and moved its last 19 residents out. Some of those residents went to other nursing
facilities in the county; others moved in with family.

Delaware County later sold it to the Buckeye Valley School District for a dollar, Comstock said.
The district considered it a possible location for a new school, but the money never materialized
and the house sat vacant.

Now, dirty mattresses litter the floor of one room. Neon graffiti covers the wall of another
room that looks as if it could have been a kitchen. Wires have been ripped out, glass shards cover
the floors of some rooms and, county officials said, the home has become a haven for drug users and
squatters.

“It’s really a safety issue now,” said Teri Morgan, a county spokeswoman. “But because it’s a
historic building, we had to jump through several hoops before we could tear it down.”

The hoop-jumping started 20 years ago, when the county commissioners started debating whether to
keep the home open and pay to renovate it, or to close it down.

Roger Koch, a Delaware preservationist, said that a group of vocal county residents wanted to
keep the home open for both its social and historic value.

“That was the major discussion, was whether to close it and save the money, or to keep it going
and face the wrath of the frugal taxpayer,” Koch said.

By 1996, the commissioners had voted to close the county home.

“That was the big decision,” Koch said. “The decision now to tear it down is just an
unfortunate, almost certain result of abandonment.”

The county received a federal grant to tear down the old Delaware Hotel on Sandusky Street,
which was gutted by an arson fire in 2009. An insurance settlement, however, covered part of that
cost, so there was leftover grant money to use on Shady Lane Manor, Comstock said.

That money will pay part of the cost of asbestos removal and demolition, slated to begin Friday.
The county is paying about $68,000 for both asbestos removal and demolition.

The barn will stay. The county plans to use it to store records and equipment, Morgan said.

Buckeye Valley schools still own the land and could — down the road and if money is available —
build a school there.

Last week, Comstock walked around the house and eyed the trees and vines that had climbed up
against the house’s walls.